


As Brother and Brother (the ne te mori faciamus remix)

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: (a la Genesis), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angeal is so done, Blood Brothers, Bonding, Chronic Illness, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Genesis is a nerd, Literary Theory, NOT a high school au, Paperwork, Sephiroth is kind of a weeaboo, Shinra Company, Shinra Company Medical Coverage, Teenage SOLDIERs being teenage soldiers, Teenagers, Worldbuilding, Wutai, Wutai War, a stabbing is a highly context-sensitive interaction, despite the cafeteria scene, just saying, professional ninja fighter, was probably teenage Sephiroth's actual job description
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-18 01:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10606653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: During his first week as a SOLDIER Second, Angeal Hewley injured SOLDIER First Sephiroth in a sparring accident.Having had steel shrapnel temporarily embedded in his thoracic cavity was a small price to pay, Sephiroth felt later, for two friends who understood completely that he was as human as they.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally chapter three of my AU collection 'not one before another,' but its preposterous length as a single chapter compared to those on either side of it bugged me until I reposted it as its own story. Sorry to anybody who, you know, already read that and wanted me to post something actually new!

When Angeal and Genesis had still been new recruits, recently enough arrived in Midgar to still be shocked and appalled by the price of fresh fruit, but after their meteoric rise from SOLDIER Third to SOLDIER Second in a week had drawn attention to them, Angeal had swung his family weapon at Sephiroth with all his newly enhanced strength, and shattered the sword that blocked it.

The broken blade itself had been nothing special, apart from being the single-edged Wutaian style Sephiroth was beginning to feel he liked, and if it hadn’t been for some of the shrapnel burying itself in his chest cavity while he was too surprised to dodge, all he would have taken away from the experience would have been a new respect for the unwieldy heirloom. And possibly its wielder.

(He suspected that this incident was the reason Angeal stopped using the Hewley sword casually, began training and fighting with standard-issue broadswords, which was foolish because it wasn’t _that_ powerful a weapon, and in fact by the time Angeal was facing opponents he would not have felt dishonorable unleashing his father’s sword against he had realized _they_ might harm _it_ , and took to simply carting it around everywhere unused as a very strange sort of weight training. ‘Freighted with metaphor,’ Genesis called him once.)

But the steel shards of Sephiroth’s training sword did just that, slicing between and under his ribs, and even with his robust anatomy it would have been unwise to simply Cure the damage with the metal still inside, which meant surgery. It was hardly the first time he’d been opened up but he never liked it; the only surprise was that the anaesthetic worked better than usual and Hojo sewed him up fairly efficiently, not taking time to explore.

A much larger surprise was waking up in the infirmary with two teenagers in purple jumpsuits waiting beside the bed.

“I’m really very sorry,” the dark-haired Second said as soon as they’d established he was fully conscious and not in need of anything.

Sephiroth flicked his fingers lethargically. “Sparring accident. Hardly going to retaliate.”

Hewley looked appalled. “I wasn’t trying to _accuse_ you. Or appease you. I realize you outrank us but you’re also at least a year younger, I…feel terrible about being so careless with a comrade’s safety. So I wanted to apologize.”

The auburn-haired Second—Rhapsodic?—pointed at the back of his friend’s head and mouthed _honor freak._

Well, if he meant it, accepting was probably the only way to shut him up. “It’s fine,” Sephiroth said. “Your conduct was not inappropriate.”

His voice rasped a little, and Hewley said, “Are you sure you don’t want some water?”

“Very.” The IV drip would replenish his fluids adequately, he couldn’t swallow safely lying on his back, and he knew from experience that trying to sit up just yet, even with assistance from the hospital bed, would be far more unpleasant than a mere scratchy throat.

“They wouldn’t let me give you a transfusion,” Hewley said unhappily, as if being deprived of the opportunity to bleed for Sephiroth’s benefit was a personal blow.

“They never do,” Sephiroth shrugged. Hojo was slightly obsessed with monitoring his blood chemistry, which he assumed was at least part of the reason, but with healing magic available and his constitution it had never been a serious problem. Hewley looked offended on his behalf anyway.

“We’ll let you rest,” said Rhapsody smoothly, hooking an arm around Hewley’s chest. “Come on,” he muttered very audibly. “You’re just being weird now.”

“See you tomorrow,” Hewley said as his friend pulled him away, leaving Sephiroth in his recovery bed very much baffled.

But see him the next day they did, ducking in on their way to class in the morning and greeting him that afternoon after he’d been released for light duty. He didn’t know what to make of it. It turned out that the slim redhead was called _Rhapsodos,_ though Hewley always called him Genesis. They had been friends since early childhood and Sephiroth found himself thinking of them by their first names rather quickly, simply because those were the only ones he heard.

“You’ve already taken these classes,” Genesis declared on the third day of this pattern, slapping a textbook dramatically on the table in the mess hall before setting down his lunch rather more carefully. Angeal was already settled in across the table from Shinra’s youngest First. “Right?”

“I’m not tutoring you,” Sephiroth told him. People had asked that, occasionally, valuing a chance of improving their rankings enough to dare to approach him, but he didn’t get enough free time to fritter it away on people who wanted to sponge off of him instead of working for themselves.

Genesis sneered. “Of course you aren’t _tutoring_ me, you’re roughly twelve.”

Angeal looked up from his carefully dismembered noodle casserole. “He’s fourteen.” He would be fifteen soon. Angeal had just turned sixteen. It wasn’t much more than a year’s difference, and Sephiroth was just as tall as Genesis.

Maybe _slightly_ shorter—the Second wore his hair short and tousled, which made him look slightly taller than he was, and Sephiroth didn’t care enough to requisition his personnel file for an exact figure, which might not even be accurate if it had been a while since his last physical.

Negligent shrug from Rhapsodos. “Same thing. Anyway I wanted to ask, does Captain Rourke who does advanced tactics prefer his short-essay answers efficient or wordy?”

Sephiroth had done most of his classwork via equivalency exam, but Rourke he had worked with. “…he prefers that you answer the question.”

“Yes, but _how?_ Some instructors penalize making them read too much, whereas others consider using too few words a sign of insufficient effort.”

Sephiroth went back to his sandwich. “Try both and see.”

Genesis looked thoughtfully at him for a moment, bit into his apple, shuddered faintly and set it back down. “Ugh. Mealy. Look, did you get good marks from Rourke?”

“…yes.”

“Wonderful, laconic efficiency it is.” He stuck his fork into the casserole and left it there, standing up, while he sipped his canned coffee. “It’s ridiculous they’re willing to promote us so fast and let us make up the coursework as we go.”

Angeal shrugged. “There’s a war on.”

“Hark at the great patriot.” Genesis finally tried a bite of casserole. “Also terrible,” he pronounced. Took another bite.

“Wait until you get to the front,” said Sephiroth. Not with much venom, because at least the adolescent Captain was still _eating_ it. “There’s nothing that can’t be safely stored for three months, and a lot of it has been stored far longer.”

“ _Thank you_ for the warning. My discretionary gear at this point is going to consist entirely of clean socks and food.”

“What was it going to be before?” asked Angeal. “Books?”

“You know me so well.”

Moron. At least he was capable of gathering information and then altering his plans to fit it, thought Sephiroth. That was by no means something he’d found himself able to take for granted from the officer corps stationed in Wutai, even from all of his fellow colonels, all of whom were at least twice his age. Or had been when he originally deployed, anyway; he thought there was one who was twenty-seven now. And Heidegger had to be actively maneuvered around to get anything done.

Sephiroth didn’t offer any more advice for the rest of the meal, and Genesis didn’t ask for it. The conversation revolved largely around the other students in their classes (not all hopeless, but most of the ones who were any good in class were less than impressive with a sword, and Genesis insisted with sweeping arm gestures that there was no fundamental reason one could not excel at _both_ ) and the foods they missed most from home. The friends talked mostly to one another, but often to him.

He had no comment of his own about food. Gast used to slip him treats, sometimes, but he didn’t remember any of the foods especially clearly, just the experience of being given them, and Hojo’s stifled fury at the disruption of his nutritional balance. These days he was trusted to maintain a balanced diet on his own, which was a nice change even if it resulted in cafeteria sandwiches. Sitting quietly meant learning that being from Banora meant taking apples very, very seriously, and that Angeal’s mother baked.

Sephiroth finished his lunch and decided this was the best time to ask, or at least that any later would not be an improvement. “Why are you talking to me.”

In response Genesis frowned, huffed, and stood up, lifting his half-full lunch tray. “Well _excuse me._ ” And this was why Sephiroth _hated talking to people._ Couldn’t anyone answer a question, when he finally abandoned his pride enough to ask it? No, they just _reacted_ instead, leaving him no wiser than before.

“Is it a problem?” asked Angeal from across the table, and he at least didn’t seem angry. Though not best pleased, either.

Sephiroth stacked his empty cup on his empty plate and dropped the plastic cutlery beside it, crisply. In a matching neutral tone he said, “It has no _precedent._ ”

“…we’ve been sitting with you at lunch for three days,” pointed out Angeal.

“Precisely. What do you want?” No one had ever taken this long to make their case. Hewley’s guilt over his injury should have run its course once he was off light duty, at the latest. They were staring at him. Now they both seemed angry, and he narrowed his eyes. Whatever they had been building up to was clearly both demanding and of value to them. “Out with it.”

Genesis set his tray down again hard enough that the empty coffee can tipped sideways and fell over. “That,” he declared without sitting down, “may actually be the saddest thing I have ever heard. Dreams of the morrow hath the shattered soul. Are you insulted, Angeal? I am definitely insulted.”

“I’m trying not to be,” Angeal said in a strangely neutral voice. “Sephiroth,” he said, leaning forward. “I don’t want anything from you.”

Genesis snorted. “My rocks-for-brains partner here wants to be your _friend_ , SOLDIER First Sephiroth. If you only accept friends of comparable rank tell us now and maybe he’ll come back once he’s been promoted—don’t make that face, you know it’s inevitable,” he told Angeal.

“I don’t think rank is the problem,” Angeal replied.

The fewer things he could in theory do for them, the less likely it was that they wanted him to do them, but—no. Rank was not the problem. “And what do _you_ want?” Sephiroth asked Genesis, because it had not escaped his notice that he had spoken only on his friend’s behalf.

Rhapsodos shrugged. “The benefit of your experience with the instructors would be nice,” he said. “And once you’re up to it I’d like a spar.”

Sephiroth looked blankly at the rookie Second. All Hewley had needed to do to get the spar that had gone so drastically wrong was ask. “And?”

“No, I think that’s everything.” Genesis nodded decisively, righted the coffee can, and sat back down to readdress himself to the remains of his lunch. “ _Some_ of us have talent and pride, my young friend,” he informed Sephiroth. “I will distinguish myself ably without playing parasite, and Angeal’s honor will hardly let him do less.”

When Sephiroth glanced at Angeal, he was smiling, a wry, warm thing. “Don’t worry, he confuses everyone at first. He’s a good friend, though.”

Sephiroth suspected he might get the opportunity to discover the truth of that assurance for himself. It…wasn’t an unpleasant idea.

Genesis snapped his fingers. “Oh! Hair-care. I want to talk about that at some point. What products do you use?”

Angeal slid his tray to one side so he could bury his head in his hands. “I take it back. I don’t know you.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sephiroth is fourteen right now, and while he's already quite tall for his age that still makes him about five-eight, maybe five-nine, not the skyscraper he will later become. ^^
> 
> SOLDIER recruits mostly boys in their mid-teens, and the Wutai War started when Sephiroth was probably between twelve and sixteen, and lasted at least a decade. Shinra attacked from Wutai's southernmost port and worked their way north, devastating the landscape as they went. (There's this one inaccessible southern valley that still looks green and healthy, though.) Officially, even though it doesn't look like it on the map, Wutai is heavily forested. One of the eventual terms of surrender was that Wutai disarm by giving up all materia. 
> 
> /Wutai War facts.

Sephiroth redeployed a week later, once Hojo was satisfied there were no complications from the surgery. The General turned out to have caught poisoned shuriken in the chest, calf, and shoulder, and be running the war entirely from inside his tent until the side effects cleared up; he took one look at Sephiroth, sighed in relief, and handed him a battalion to hit the Shou-Gurren valley with, because as long as the Wutai had a strong presence there none of Shinra’s improvised bridges across was ever going to hold long enough for major troop movements.

The Wutai had destroyed their own bridge when they retreated across it, and the war effort had been stalled in place ever since. Sephiroth thought it was reasonably likely they would stay that way until Shinra manufactured either enough helicopters or airships to land a significant troop presence in the north or enough SOLDIERS near Sephiroth’s level for a small unit of them to strike behind enemy lines and take Wutaian towns whole.

Still, he had his orders. They weren’t _precisely_ bad ones. All else being equal, he would rather be told to do something impossible with no further detail than told to do something reasonable in a way which left him no space for tactical decision-making on the ground.

The Shou-Gurren valley was impenetrable except by climbing up or down steep cliffs. Down was preferable, being more simply accomplished from a more accessible location, but completely negated the element of surprise since anyone descending into the valley was visible from its floor. He requisitioned a dozen boats and two thousand feet of cable; got eight boats, three hundred feet of cable, and one thousand feet of rope. Better than expected.

His plan was, he was not overestimating when he said, the best one possible considering the circumstances and resources available. It still was not an enormous surprise to him when it went utterly to hell.

He was with the group rappelling downward; he had gone so far as to tie his hair back and wrap himself in a black cloak to avoid being a beacon. The ninjas found them anyway, of course, and he was still a hundred feet up when the rope went slack in his hands.

He kicked off from the cliff hard; rolled in the air, caught the upper boughs of the nearest tree and flung himself back toward the cliff face. Struck and launched back toward the tree again, this time kicking himself away from the hard trunk some thirty feet lower, and at forty feet he caught a screaming falling soldier under each arm, and touched down gently.

Around him the rest of his troops were falling, and he set the first two down and leapt up, caught another pair of troopers and brought them to the ground safely, closing his ears to the screams of agony and crack of splintering bones and the other still more horrible sounds of people dying, or not quite dying, at the end of a fall.

The men who’d been issued cable reached the ground, then, the ones who’d avoided catching a shuriken or a spell in the back, along with a lucky minority of those whose ropes had not been severed, and Sephiroth led the remnant of his force—some ninety men of two hundred—into the forest at a breakneck pace. The slower Wutaian forces were trampled over and lost most of their advantage, but there would be more. There were always more, and they had the advantage in woodland.

Only the most talented materia users in SOLDIER could compete magically with the average Wutaian ninja, a fact that was never acknowledged in the propaganda materials at home in Midgar but became brutally obvious at the front. Sephiroth didn’t know a single officer who didn’t aspire to impounding every materia orb in Wutai.

Since most attack spells covered a fairly broad area, especially the strong ones, the best strategy against powerful casters was to close quarters, which was why SOLDIER was so valuable in this conflict. Most lower and mid-level monsters were as well or better fought from a distance with guns, but between their materia and their shuriken users, letting the Wutai keep you out of melee range spelled doom. Basic sword training was part of the Army curriculum, and a significant percentage of the standard troops were issued blades at this point, though the President disliked the idea. It did not gel with the futurist principles that had built Shinra’s military—and Shinra itself, for that matter.

Sephiroth darted up and down the ragged line of his small command’s vanguard, more useful covering their charge than racing out ahead, or holding back his pace to lead the approximation of a formation. One of his men, running on a probably-broken ankle, choked as two halves of a ninja fell from a tree before she had a chance to attack him. Sephiroth caught the man by the shoulder before he could fall, gave him a careful push forward—too much and he’d just knock him to the ground. “Keep up. Or else you’ll die.”

He would probably die anyway. But he had no chance of surviving if left behind.

They pressed on. The Wutaian camp that aerial surveillance had located drew into sight—better-camouflaged than the Shinra variety, and arranged around a principle of concentric rings rather than rows, but not terribly different otherwise.

Sephiroth had no hope they had successfully taken the Wutai unawares, though that had been the best-case scenario.

He put on a burst of speed and dashed across the near perimeter of the camp before his men could reach it, destroying the defensive traps the enemy had set, and then with his free hand flung up a flare.

It hung in the air over the camp, glaring red, and then his formation crossed the perimeter, and the men who’d climbed up the cliff-face from the sea charged, and the Wutaian encampment was caught between them, and briefly it seemed this might be a victory in spite of the casualty rate.

Then in the center of all the rings the largest two tents ripped apart, as though their inhabitants’ sheer rage had tattered the fabric. The taller one dove immediately into the fray, while the smaller held position. Sephiroth altered course to target that smaller enemy, instinct and experience uniting in agreement that they were the foremost threat, but the Wutaian line gelled against him, and no matter how fast he killed there was still a delay—

And then the delay had become too much. A massive Slow rippled over the field, catching everyone but the caster, a dozen of what must be Wutai's highest-level ninjas, and Sephiroth. The unaffected ninjas leapt forward, cutting away Shinra troops as their own withdrew toward the caster of the Slow, until there were two fronts again, and Sephiroth was skilled and quick but he could only target one enemy at a time, when they were spread so widely—he saw his own troops take down one of the attackers through force of numbers, but the others were slaughtering without challenge until he could reach them, and—

The caster who’d maintained position now unleashed a somewhat smaller Haste, that petered out near the place where the Wutaian line fell—a few of their allies near the fringes might have been left out, and a few Shinra forces sped, but still the strategy had gone off without a hitch before Sephiroth’s eyes. The average Wutaian fighter was now slightly faster than their personal base speed, some of their best were at more than twice that, and all but one of their enemies were partially debilitated. Sephiroth was the only Shinra unit still fighting to capacity.

The juggernaut that had burst forth along with the Time-using sorcerer intercepted him in a clash of steel before he could reach his next target.

The other swordsman leapt back instead of maintaining a blade-lock, but as soon as Sephiroth tried to advance, he cut him off again, and a burst of spell-light illuminated the face under the top-knot. With a faint shock, Sephiroth recognized it from a dossier he’d skimmed a year ago—it was the young Lord Kisaragi, who would be taking over rulership of all Wutai when his mother passed or abdicated. _He_ was holding Shou-Gurren?

‘Young’ was what the man was always called, but he was obviously thirty if he was a day, tall and solidly built. With the benefit of his partner’s Haste he was fast enough to keep pace with Sephiroth, and while he didn’t have the strength to halt the full weight of Sephiroth’s blows, he didn’t need to—he kept turning them aside. Just far enough to protect him. A space had opened around their duel wide enough that he didn’t have to worry about Sephiroth striking one of his subordinates once deflected. He wasn’t quite fast enough or good enough, and not nearly strong enough, to break through Sephiroth’s own guard, but he _was_ controlling the distance of their fight. He was in control.

The aggravating thing was that Kisaragi Godo was plainly not a swordsman. He had been trained with a sword, and trained well—Wutai was justly proud of its warrior tradition—but Sephiroth suspected the man preferred heavy shuriken, and would have used those if the tactical situation had permitted. And even beyond that—every time their blades met, he was aware of the pressure of—something. Some strength not brought to bear.

Kisaragi was _holding back_. And still holding Sephiroth at bay. He had not been this simply met since he was _nine years old._

The space around them meant it was safe to call a second-level Fire spell. The flames engulfed Sephiroth too, but he was absolutely certain he could survive far worse damage than the older man, and he made use of the distraction as Godo’s sleeves caught fire to bring his sword slicing up at an angle that would be harder to deflect, taking advantage of the height difference, and when it was met bore down with all his strength and— _yes!_ —broke through.

The point of his blade carved into chest muscle and sent Kisaragi flying backward, bleeding. He doubted it was a fatal wound, hadn’t felt ribs catch and part early enough, but as he moved to follow up the blow the air around him rippled and he found himself caught in a powerful, pinpoint Slow.

It was lucky it wasn’t Stop, but of course that was harder to make stick. Overpowering a Slow had a much higher chance of successfully hobbling him, even if it didn’t take him out of the fight entirely the way a stronger status effect might do.

Movement to his left and he spun, his reflexes as impaired as everything else, and only just deflected a sword-stroke aimed at his heart. His Shinra-issue broadsword snapped in half.

Momentum carried the enemy forward into him, cutting a deep gouge into his shoulder, and it was almost purely instinct without calculation that sent Sephiroth’s hand sliding into place to catch his enemy around the throat. He twisted.

Even Slowed, he was fast enough to catch the woman’s sword as she fell, with the hand that was not still feeling the reverberation of a snapping neck through its bones. The human spine was very delicate. He’d known it would work. He had lost count of how many people he had killed in the course of two years of war. The feeling still clung. This was only a little more intimate than normal, but usually he did not use his bare hands and evidently this mattered to them.

There was no time for changing out materia now, so he sheathed the useless broadsword hilt to clear later and resolved to make do with whatever the ninja had been using. Fire flickered over his fingers when he called—excellent. He carved through the next attacker, but it was harder than it should have been. His men were selling their lives dearly but they were dying around him, and with his speed lost he could no longer efficiently target the strongest enemies.

_Fall back,_ he would have shouted, except that there was nowhere to fall back _to,_ besides over the cliff; they would take the valley or they would all die—Sephiroth knew he could get out alone, but he couldn’t take anyone with him, so it would have to wait until most or all of his men had been butchered.

With no better aim, he kept the remnant of his battalion pushing toward the cliffs. If they dove far enough from the rockface, some of his troopers might survive jumping into the sea. (Especially since the eight wooden boats Shinra had spared this operation should still be waiting, with skeleton crew available to fish divers out.)

They were cut off shortly before they got that far, the highest-level Hasted opponents sweeping around to separate them from the cliff’s edge in a crescent shape backed by weaker support units, bristling with shuriken, and all presided over by the tiny sorceress that had made such a shambles of an already undermined plan. Sephiroth felt the remains of his unit’s morale falter.

He was still the fastest of them, and as the casting specialist spread her arms and the air hummed, he left his men behind to throw himself at her directly, because whatever she was summoning was powerful enough to turn the wind thick, and they would have no chance at all if she succeeded. Even his own chances of escape would dwindle.

A shuriken as tall as he was blocked his path, and he didn’t dare try to cut through it in case the unfamiliar weapon in his hand broke as well, and left him unarmed. Kicked it aside, instead, and didn’t pause to deflect the swarm of tiny blades close behind it, let them hit.

He called magic, in the time this gave him, but the woman had a heavy barrier shield over her and the fire landed as no more than a shower of sparks, enough to do a little damage but not enough to disrupt concentration. The flickering lights were coming faster, the caster flattening to the eye as she reached beyond normal space.

Sephiroth recognized grimly that he wasn’t going to get there in time.

A bolt of purple plunged from above and smashed the sorceress onto her back, a sliver of magenta light impaling her chest. Genesis Rhapsodos straightened up, his sword sliding out from between her ribs. “The Goddess descends from the sky,” he declaimed.

Sephiroth finished lunging across the distance, grabbed him by his sword-harness, and yanked him back as the dying woman’s death-curse thundered out of the air. It wasn’t the Summon she’d been preparing—she didn’t have enough time left for that—just a pillar of lightning, absurdly overcharged with all the magic she had had left. They were caught in its edges, and when it cleared her body had vanished.

Genesis was on his feet first, despite being worse-hit—the benefits of not being held by Time magic—but Sephiroth was right behind him, and rose to discover that the rest of Wutai’s top assets had likewise been struck by falling SOLDIERs, and more than half of them were down and no longer moving. A small distance away, Angeal Hewley was crossing blades with a tall ninja all in black, the family sword strapped to his back serving as a sort of heavy armor against attacks from behind.

It wasn’t enough, at this point, to give them a chance to rally. They were still badly outnumbered, and the Wutai host had Haste still on their side. But it should be enough to give them a chance to retreat, and it meant their casualties had perhaps not died entirely for nothing.

“To me!” Sephiroth called, and sent a crescent of unformed destructive energy leaping from the end of his salvaged blade and scything through the enemies around him, as he set to carving a path through to the only way out. He really did prefer the katana shape.

Rhapsodos and Hewley had, it emerged once their escape was complete, been sent in at the head of an eight-man squad, the rest being Thirds, all of them older than the pair of new-minted Second Class Captains, but none higher-ranking. With their help, mostly under Angeal’s organization, seventy-three of the three hundred and fifty troops Sephiroth had led into this death-trap were evacuated safely onto the waiting boats. (Four hit the water and didn’t come up, and there was no time to search for them.)

Angeal passed Sephiroth a Barrier materia as the barges pulled away, and between him and Genesis they covered the retreat of the little flotilla. One boat was sunk, but slowly enough that all the men aboard were able to leap across to adjacent decks before the inescapable suction of the hull sliding under the water could begin. None of the boats was crowded even afterward.

The voyage south was very silent. Sephiroth barely noticed when the Slow wore off him. He cleaned the blood off his new sword, pulled embedded tiny shuriken out of his chest, and watched the shoreline.

They left the wounded at the base camp on Shinra’s southern beachhead, and from there Rhapsodos, Hewley, Sephiroth, four of the Thirds, and eight miraculously hale regulars made their way upslope to Central Command. On arrival, Sephiroth and the two SOLDIER Seconds reported to the General’s tent for an accounting.

-

“I’m promoting all of you,” the General said. He was on his feet again, but stiffly. “Your plan was solid, even though standing orders undermined it, and _your_ rescue mission successful. Colonel, colonel. Commander.”

Genesis straightened up a little further, seeming entirely pleased, but Angeal seemed to share Sephiroth’s feelings on the matter. “It’s our _first deployment,_ ” he said blankly. Belatedly, “Sir.”

“I lost,” Sephiroth pointed out, “eighty percent of my command.” And he’d known he was going to, had planned the only course that gave him any chance of victory but known it was unlikely and the casualty rate unavoidably appalling. It was one thing to accept that that was the situation he had been handed and make the best of it, another to be _rewarded_ for it _._

“And if you’d had the rank to force the supplies you needed, you might _not_ have,” the General snapped. “Come to me next time, if you can; I would at least have been able to assign you more SOLDIERs from the start. I’m taking full responsibility for the Shou-Gurren snafu, because you shouldn’t and Heidegger never will.” His mako-bright eyes ran over the three of them, Angeal a few inches taller than the other two, none of them fully grown. His eyes were tired. “Take good care of this army, boys, and of SOLDIER. I’m counting on you.”

They left his tent bewildered and weighed down with responsibility. “Wind sails over the water’s surface,” Genesis announced. “I’m going to wait until the paperwork comes through to think about it. Mess?”

Sephiroth had no appetite, but he knew he had to eat anyway, so he nodded assent. Angeal murmured something similar.

He had been a colonel since he first deployed eighteen months ago. The space in which an adolescent colonel of his talents operated made sense to him. The units assigned him were smaller than his rank suggested, and he’d led so many charges the memories of them blurred together. As a Commander—it was a good thing, he told himself. Less chance of winding up in a situation like Shou-Gurren again.

Or just more chance of winding up in one with more men under him.

More independence was never a bad thing, though, so he applied himself to the stew-like substance in the mess tent as best he could and tried to think optimistically. There were generally between four and six Commanders on the ground at any given time, as compared to twelve-to-eighteen colonels. He had some ideas about bridging Shou-Gurren…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m assuming Shinra went through a lot of Generals before Sephiroth, because srsly he was a kid when this war started. So I figure a whole string of varying competence. Like the Union in the US Civil War! Only instead of becoming a famously corrupt President, their final contestant declared himself the Chosen One, died, and then tried to kill everyone and fuse with their life energy to become a god.
> 
> (Also Angeal has to have had positive role models in the service, to believe so much in the honor of SOLDIER when Shinra has none.)


	3. Chapter 3

By his next leave he hadn’t yet wrangled his valley-spanning mission into reality, but while Heidegger didn’t care about the attrition rate on the troops as such he wasn’t actually _enthusiastic_ about sending battalions into the woodlands to get chewed up, and he was under pressure from the President to move the front forward. Sephiroth had every expectation of putting his plan into action during his next deployment. Rank was definitely useful.

Genesis and Angeal were summoned back to Midgar for the President’s annual Solstice Ball, which Sephiroth’s leave had of course already been scheduled to intersect. Sephiroth was permitted to attend in uniform, with a long tailored jacket over top, to cover his bare arms and add a breadth to his shoulders that no one had when just barely fifteen no matter how strong, because this would serve as excellent propaganda for the glamor of SOLDIER First, but the purple jumpsuits of Seconds were declared ‘tacky’ and the new adolescent colonels obliged to acquire formal wear. Genesis of course had already had some. Angeal’s was rented, but (at Genesis’ insistence) from a place that altered the rented clothing for a better fit.

“I can’t wait to make First,” Angeal complained, fidgeting with a button.

“I am reliably informed these occasions are viper-pits. We shall watch each other’s backs,” Genesis proclaimed, settling his shirt-cuffs to precise symmetry before reaching for his gloves.

“Will we?” Sephiroth asked. He knew what that meant in battle; wasn’t sure how it was meant to transfer to this.

“We’ve all saved each other’s lives several times over now, Commander.” Genesis’ smirk was lazy and unconcerned. “Does that mean nothing to you?”

“You’d do the same for any comrade-in-arms, I would expect,” Sephiroth said coolly. Genesis’ smirk flickered toward a frown.

“We’re friends,” interceded Angeal firmly. Gave Sephiroth one of those long measuring looks of his, eyebrows just a little crooked. “Aren’t we?”

The words tried to stick in his throat, but—“Yes,” he admitted. “We are.” Having said it, it was somehow easier to smile. “Did you really doubt it?”

Angeal smiled back, shrugged. “You’re hard to read sometimes.”

“What he means,” Genesis drawled, “is that you’re cold and standoffish and _rude_ , and we would hate to be a nuisance.”

Genesis lived to make a nuisance of himself, and was one to talk about being rude. Sephiroth rolled his eyes. “If you’re a nuisance to me, I will make sure you know. Angeal doesn’t have to worry.”

Blue eyes contemplated him narrowly for several seconds, and then Genesis’ smirk came back, lying on his face more easily, somehow. “So brothers-in-arms to the skirmish shall we hence?”

“If by skirmish you mean ‘confrontation with executives,’ then by all means.”

“I only _wish_ he’d meant there’d been a monster attack on the Plate and we were being dispatched,” Angeal sighed, smoothing hair that was already perfectly smooth. “Rented suit and all. You’re both naturals at this sort of thing.”

Sephiroth wondered what sort of thing he meant. Genesis certainly seemed to have been born to attend parties, but anyone claiming Sephiroth was at his best in social situations deserved to be laughed out of the room. Angeal wasn’t polished like Genesis, but from what Sephiroth had seen people instinctively liked him. Of less use in this kind of environment than others, admittedly, but still advantageous.

“We’re here to be decorative,” he pointed out. It wasn’t as if they were expected to negotiate business deals on Shinra’s behalf or anything complex. “Just be yourself. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Genesis grinned. “Just imagine though,” he said, “the three of us leaping into battle in our party clothes….”

Sadly, this was not required. The closest they got to combat was Angeal bravely engaging in conversation an executive who kept touching Sephiroth’s hair, and the bit where Hojo’s latest second-in-command mysteriously fell into a punch bowl.

The exotic dancers arrived at eleven-thirty sharp, at which point it was permissible for a large category of guests to slip away. This included anyone under eighteen or attending with a spouse, unless the President was making an example of you and genially pressed you not to insult him by declining his hospitality. Since the young SOLDIERs’ decorative function had been superseded, Shinra didn’t mind if they left—probably preferred it. Overlapping the two display categories might rob each of impact.

Sephiroth was amused to see that even having drunk a slightly unwise quantity of wine, Genesis did not seem impressed by the dancers. He also didn’t attempt to leave on his own, but Angeal drew him away without resistance, other than talking all the way out of the room. Apparently Genesis had _opinions_ about synchronized dance choreography.

-

Being a Commander meant doing a great deal more paperwork; Sephiroth had consequently been assigned his own office. It was a strange feeling—he’d had quarters of his own since officially enrolling in SOLDIER but even the postage-stamp-sized office space he’d been allotted sat on him strangely in a way those hadn’t. Not merely a place for him to occupy when at rest, but a space in which to _function._ _His_ functional space, specifically.

The peace and quiet of the executive levels the morning after one of the President’s parties made a pleasant work environment, and the settled feeling of being an _employee_ of the company, with his space and his salary, kept Sephiroth in a good mood through a stack of personnel reviews, a dreadful muddle of basic requisitions, and his latest attempt to make Form 863-B permute into a valid format for presenting his strategic opinions in a way more concrete than speaking up at meetings.

Toward the end of that, the Banorans knocked on his door.

They stayed in the doorway once it was open, crowding one another slightly but not much more than if they’d tried to fit into the minimal standing room inside, and crowding Sephiroth considerably less.

“Good morning, Angeal.” Sephiroth contemplated Genesis. He wasn’t visibly hung over. “Have you recovered from the fact that the President’s dancers are hired for reasons other than their performance skills?”

“Yes, thank you. Though really, the money and location to arrange any command performance he wishes, and that’s his selection? Dreadful waste.”

“The President is a utilitarian.” Which was not to say he did not indulge himself freely, but he gained far more power over his guests from an erotic dance troupe than he would from an edifying piece of theater, or even just a performance of Loveless. There were _reasons,_ Sephiroth knew, that Hojo was someone the President relied upon, and in spite of his personality came close to trusting. Their priorities might not be quite the same, but they were similar enough to understand each other.

Genesis waved their employer and his taste in party entertainment away like a bad smell. “Anyway, on to the reason we came here.”

“Which is?” He wasn’t unhappy to see them, precisely, but they were invading his comfortable islet of solitude and he hoped they didn’t intend to stay long.

“Genesis had a drunken idea that he still likes now that he’s sober.” Angeal paused, then admitted, “I like it too.”

Sephiroth was honestly unsure whether Angeal liking an idea balanced out the fact that Genesis had dreamed it up while drunk. “Say on.”

Genesis’ smile was broad and airy as he slouched against the door frame. “To celebrate making it through our first deployment alive, Angeal and I are becoming blood brothers. Since you’re rather our partner in life-saving, we wondered if you wanted to join in?”

Sephiroth…didn’t know what to feel. He only vaguely recognized the term, and it seemed like this should be something important, significant, between two friends who’d known each other so long. But the easy way Genesis invited him to join in suggested it wasn’t important at all, and his inability to tell what mattered and what didn’t outside battle or the lab was one of the reasons Sephiroth had never spent much time around other SOLDIERs. There was rarely much space between the stiffness of their divide in either age or rank, and the inclination to take advantage of his idiosyncratic patches of ignorance to trick him into humiliating himself, and that space had usually been occupied by hangers-on and scammers. It was generally safest to assume nothing was important.

“…you’re sixteen,” he pointed out at last, setting down his pen. “Isn’t that some kind of children’s game?”

“It’s an _ancient warrior tradition,_ ” said Genesis.

“I’m not sure about that,” said Angeal, “but it’s done a lot on the Western Continent, even by adults.”

They weren’t _from_ the Western Continent, but Angeal never lied. “And the duties of a blood brother are…”

“About the same as those of any brother, I guess? Maybe a little more stringent since we’re taking it on voluntarily. Keep an eye on one another, help one another learn from our mistakes, always have each other’s backs against the rest of the world.”

Genesis smirked. “Actually spend time together, attempt to amend one another’s cultural deficiencies…”

“Listen to each other recite _the same lines_ for the _thousandth time_ …”

Sephiroth waited for his friends to stop sharing a smile before saying, “Those seem similar to the duties of a friend?”

Genesis rolled his eyes and muttered something indistinct about _duty_ but Angeal said, “The idea is we’re promising never to stop.” And. Well.

Sephiroth could admit to himself that going back to before this pair had barreled their way into his life sounded…bleak. “Alright,” he said.

Angeal looked as startled as he did delighted.

-

They took over one of the training rooms in the middle of the night. The equipment and power was shut down and the room was lit only by the tiny fire in a metal basin Angeal had carefully lit. Sephiroth had never seen light _move_ like this, not when it wasn’t part of the chaos of battle, and he stared into it so deeply he almost jolted when Genesis whispered, “ _ready?_ ”

Sephiroth nodded and drew the katana he’d picked up at Shou-Gurren from its sheath, and laid it across his knees. Genesis had his out already, an ornate red-chased glyph-blade he’d named Rapier even though it wasn’t, and Angeal pulled his family sword from his back, pressed it briefly against his forehead, and propped it against the front of his folded legs, blunt side on the floor and keen, polished edge up.

Simultaneously, they each dragged both thumbs along the sharp edges, slicing deep under the skin, and then raised their hands and slotted fingers together, pressing the bleeding pads of their thumbs together hard, blood mingling.

Angeal ran a few degrees hotter than Sephiroth, and Genesis somewhere in between, and the press of their bleeding fingers together drew it to his attention as never before. It stung, the pressure and having someone else’s blood in even such a tiny wound; it was dreadfully unhygienic and the sense of rebellion against Hojo at contaminating his fussed-over blood made Sephiroth want to laugh. He met Angeal’s eyes, then Genesis’, and they seemed to be feeling the same faint, reckless hilarity.

“It’s a promise,” Genesis whispered.

“A promise,” Angeal echoed, Sephiroth half a beat behind.

They let go when the burn of injury started to be replaced by the burn of mako-enhanced healing, and Genesis sprang grandly to his feet. “Alright, I’m the eldest brother, that means I make all the decisions.”

Sephiroth stared up at him, betrayal settling in his chest. Why had he _ever_ considered believing that all of this had been anything but a stratagem to gain control over him? A _stupid_ one, considering that unless their little blood-sharing ceremony had been some kind of unheard-of magical ritual there was nothing forcing him to observe the terms of the agreement—

Angeal was laughing. “Don’t listen to Gen,” he told Sephiroth. “That isn’t even how _real_ brothers work, he just can’t resist a chance to make himself sound more important. Sit down,” he told Genesis, who did.

Sephiroth eyed him distrustfully. “I don’t,” he said firmly, “require anyone else making decisions for me. Also I still outrank you.”

“Give me time,” Genesis sniffed. As though he had even come close to winning a spar since they arrived. Angeal _had_ technically defeated him, but sword-shattering was not exactly a recognized technique, it had been an accident, and it wouldn’t work twice.

-

Hollander reportedly went into hysterics at Angeal’s next physical. Something about genetic markers; Sephiroth got nothing straightforward on the subject. Anyway the professor got Angeal to admit that he might have gotten Sephiroth’s blood in an open wound—between training and campaigning together that wasn’t exactly shocking, even if Sephiroth was so rarely injured he had used his Limit Break all of thrice in his life, one of them under laboratory conditions.

Hojo was probably incapable of hysterics, but he was on the issue like a shark scenting blood. Sephiroth admitted when questioned that he couldn’t swear he hadn’t gotten any of Angeal’s blood in a wound at the same time, and his next tour of duty was pushed back three weeks.

So. Many. Tests. Of course they weren’t told the conclusions, apart from being reminded that blood-borne disease was serious and one of the risk factors increased by their SOLDIER enhancements, and to avoid such contamination in future, and if it occurred to decontaminate the area immediately. Sephiroth mentally edited that to ‘as soon as possible’ because war rarely let you attend to any form of treatment ‘immediately,’ but he had never seen Hojo so taken-aback by readings, so he supposed it was serious.

Oddly, Hollander didn’t seem to notice anything at all odd about Genesis’ blood. “My genetics are more robust,” he bragged next time they were alone.

Angeal threw a cracker at him. “If Sephiroth and I are dying and it’s all the fault of your stupid romantic ideas…” he said, seeming curiously unconcerned by the possibility.

“I doubt we’re dying,” Sephiroth shrugged. Leaned over to take one of Angeal’s crackers because if he was throwing them at people he clearly wasn’t very hungry. “Hojo would have been angrier.” He paused, considered. “Or laughed harder.”

“I am so desperately glad not to be you,” said Genesis. And stole one of Angeal’s crackers.

-

They found out that Genesis’ genetics were not so robust after all in probably the worst possible way.

The General had been dead by the time Sephiroth got back to Wutai, and his replacement was less competent but more confident, and very much Heidegger’s man. Casualties were rising. They still hadn’t taken or gotten past Shou-Gurren.

It took another four months to get his operation set up. Over half of that was maneuvering for approval, but it took a full month to get all the physical pieces arranged and shipped. Training to make sure it would all go together smoothly and efficiently took less than three weeks.

At the end of that time, two helicopters dipped their way across the Shou-Gurren valley, flying as fast and high as was possible, burdened as they were. Once they’d reached the far side, they released four steel poles, solid straight through but cored in lead near the bottom, back-hooked like harpoons, and wickedly sharp at the lower ends.

As soon as these had buried themselves deep in the earth and partway into stone, they were followed by two squads of SOLDIERs, sixteen men in total: Two Firsts, ten Seconds, and four Thirds. The Thirds and two of the Seconds were the ones who’d practiced the maneuver most; the rest of the unit formed a defensive line around them; prepared to step in if the technical specialists fell, but primarily here to defend.

Grappling hooks thudded into the dirt at their feet, fired by a pair of pneumatic grappling guns Sephiroth had known Weapons Development had but had never produced for the market. The SOLDIERs on construction duty picked the cables up and started pulling and clipping, and then bent to pry up the next set of grapping hooks.

Six minutes after the sixteen of them had dropped, ten strong cables were strung across the valley and firmly fixed at each end, and from each end the building teams set forth toward the middle, unwinding reels of steel mesh and affixing its edges to the parabola of the lowest pair of cables, running shorter wire spans upward to the higher suspension cables and reinforcing the mesh deck with rigid, hollow steel bars at intervals. The version tested near Kalm had been able, on completion, to support a small truck.

The bridge-building was almost entirely a SOLDIER operation, relying for its feasibility on their enhanced abilities and the relative self-sufficiency these allowed. Even more than ten years after the inception of the program, Shinra’s tactics did not take full advantage of SOLDIER potential.

Sephiroth had hand-picked a team of Thirds who were good with materia, and it was now their duty to hold overlapping magical and physical barriers under the construction zone. As the bridge wove together, they spread out along its length, protecting it. When anyone’s strength ran low, they held up a hand and were replaced, and only then let their spell falter.

The whole process took no more than fifty minutes, and at the end of it there was a fairly sturdy steel suspension bridge across the valley. It was still a point of vulnerability, but nothing like the precarious earlier attempts at bridges Shinra had attempted, to catastrophe.

There had been sporadic attacks from the valley below throughout, but Barrier only worked in one direction and the hail of bullets that consistently rained onto the source of any attack seemed to have had a suppressing effect. By the time the troops started marching, rows of four shoulder-to-shoulder flowing up the steel span, it had been long enough since there had been any fire from below that it seemed reasonably possible they had withdrawn.

Sephiroth knew that even if they had left the valley, they would not have given up. He stood ready in the semicircle of defenders, the Thirds to his left and right almost buzzing with tension and annoying him badly. They were about his own age, a little older, but they struck him as dreadfully young. Even Genesis was more mature.

The Wutaians waited until they had about a quarter of their force across to attack.

Personally Sephiroth thought they should have moved earlier, if they meant to win, but possibly they were overconfident—assumed their victory over this fraction of Shinra's forces, and wanted to make sure their enemies’ losses were significant enough to dissuade them from trying this again. Their onslaught was certainly impressive.

Godo was back, the Commander noted, but he arrowed straight toward Genesis—the pink sword might be almost as good as Sephiroth’s hair for marking the bearer out to those carrying grudges—which led Sephiroth to assume the sorceress had been a personal friend or Kisaragi clanswoman, since this was only Genesis’ third deployment and the second had been dull. Sephiroth would have liked a rematch, but he had his position to hold, guarding the bridge and the steady stream of reinforcements coming across it.

The duel between Genesis and Godo was the sort of drawn-out, dramatic, nearly-even match that belonged in a play, not a real battlefield. Sephiroth saw very little of it, but he did notice that it had ended abortively, with no clear victor, as Godo swept across the field to protect a pair of fighters no older than Sephiroth had been when he first went to war.

Godo vanished shortly afterward, and so did the children, so presumably they had not been authorized to join this attack.

Into his place stepped a trio of fighters, two armed with swords and one with shuriken. Genesis took one of the swordsmen down early with a lucky blow, but then found himself stymied by teamwork. Sephiroth spun and blocked and cut and wished intently for a larger weapon—the one he had taken from the ninja woman during the battle in the valley was of good forging, but he could wish it at least half a meter longer to extend his reach.

Angeal was being pressed hard on the far side of the formation, he glimpsed during one turn, not by any single great fighter but by incompetent formation-neighbors and thus a sheer press of numbers. The sword across his back was serving again as armor. He would be better served by a partner fighting at his back, but as he could not have that just now….

Angeal and Sephiroth felt it at the same moment—a fraction of an instant after it happened—a sword that did not exist sliding between their ribs.

It was cold, and the pain was incredible. Sephiroth had rarely felt a blade inside his chest while fully conscious, and never one so large or carelessly placed. He turned, automatically, to find Genesis slipping onto one knee, blood already bubbling onto his lips. A shuriken sliced along Angeal’s temple and he didn’t even flinch, though it seemed to shake him out of his instant of transfixed horror and remind him to start defending himself again, as he carved his way toward Genesis and the ninja-tou that had been thrust through his torso.

The ninja pulled his sword out.

The pain vanished with it, and Genesis hit the ground. The masked fighter raised his weapon for a finishing blow.

Sephiroth saw…not red. He had heard the idiom before, and if it fitted any moment it should have been this one. Red was Genesis’ favored color and the color of his blood, and this was Sephiroth’s brother by a voluntary oath being taken from him, and anger was a red emotion.

Not red. The world had turned almost—white. He was used to being faster than those around him, but it felt as though the Wutaians between himself and Genesis were standing still in a line to be cut down. As if, had he not been in such a hurry to reach his destination, he could have taken his time killing them. He didn’t.

The ninja that had felled Genesis had not been taking his time, but Sephiroth severed his arm before the second blow could fall.

Angeal was down on one knee. Sephiroth beheaded the ninja he had already disarmed, and the red-gold light of a Phoenix Down glowed briefly. Genesis must have stopped breathing. Green healing glowed. Angeal swore. That was never a promising thing to hear following medical intervention.

He glanced down, and Genesis was breathing—but he was also bleeding. His wound showed no sign of having been healed. Angeal had to lunge to his feet to deflect a shuriken coming from the direction Sephiroth was not covering, but the Restore was warming green again on his right wrist.

The gaps he and Angeal had left in the line were being felt; no one had broken through to the bridge yet but troopers were falling faster than they should, and if either of the eager Thirds that were struggling to fill his place were to fall, the line would break. Well, then. They would simply have to ensure that there was no one left to break it.

Sephiroth lifted his sword in one hand and raised the energy of an Ice materia to fill the other, and spun into battle as though scattering raindrops.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Genesis in canon was convinced S-cells held the secret to curing his degradation because Sephiroth was (physically) stable, but given the sample from Zack turned his copy into a raving mutant monster and that his whole medical crisis may have been a result of latent Cetra genes clashing with Jenova cells, I’m pretty sure he was very very wrong.


	4. Chapter 4

That there were still enemies left alive to retreat could be honestly at least half attributed to the fact that Sephiroth had been unwilling to leave the range of Shinra’s defensive line by more than five meters. The five battalions of troops they had formed up for this operation had all crossed the valley, and begun occupying defensive positions; a sixth was on its way with equipment and cannons to set up a secure perimeter. Once those were in place, even if the bridge fell again the Wutai would not easily push Shinra back beyond the valley.

Shou-Gurren had been overcome. After most of a year looking forward to this accomplishment, Sephiroth was utterly disinterested in it now that it was achieved. Even as his troops sent up a cheer, he was crossing the bridge again, following Angeal, who was following the stretcher carrying Genesis.

Sephiroth somehow forced his way onto the medical transport going back to Midgar. It was probably a form of desertion and definitely dereliction of duty, but unless the Wutai had something truly terrible in reserve he wasn’t actually _needed_ on the ground just now, and that sort of thing wasn’t punished in the upper levels the way it was with enlisted men. He could still feel the cold steel sliding into his chest the way it had not actually done; he was prepared to bluff his way as far as he could.

This turned out to be right to the doors of the Science Department emergency operating theater, where after about twenty minutes Professor Hollander came out and walked over to him and Angeal. “We’ve got Genesis stabilized,” he told Angeal. “For now.”

Sephiroth felt strangely invisible as Angeal said, “What do you mean ‘for now?’”

“The complications aren’t something we can fix just like that.” Hollander shook his head. “With the right combination of Cure and Esuna we should be able to get him fit for duty again,” Hollander said. “But first he’ll need some blood.”

Sephiroth stepped forward to volunteer, but he hadn’t even completed the motion before Hollander was glowering at him. “You’ve done _enough_.” He looked toward Angeal. “It’s not ideal, but…” He beckoned, and Angeal came with him.

This left Sephiroth alone to haunt the Shinra building as unobtrusively as possible in case someone noticed he should be in Wutai, and work his way through reams of paperwork that actually belonged to one of the Commanders assigned to Midgar (who had clearly been avoiding his responsibilities and therefore could hardly file a complaint about having his desk raided) trying not to think about _you’ve done enough_ and the way it had been the precise opposite of a reassurance. Or about the feeling of a sword entering his chest.

He took a break an hour and a half in to wash off some of the blood. It had been too dry already to stain the papers, but the smell was starting to annoy him.

Angeal was more intelligent than people looking at the bulk of his shoulders tended to expect, and he kept his ears open, and that evening he was able to tell Sephiroth the damning truth: Genesis had developed some rare genetic imbalance that was inhibiting his body’s ability to heal. And it was because of contamination from Sephiroth, the marks of which had been hidden, at first, because instead of the contaminants being incorporated into his cells as they had in Angeal’s, his system had locked itself into an intense immunological struggle. One which it was now losing.

Genesis was dying.

The only bright spot was that even Hojo didn’t seem to have realized they had done it _on purpose_ , and that was not very bright at all. Sephiroth was tempted to confess just so someone might punish him.

Angeal didn’t seem inclined to do so. “It was his idea,” his dark-haired friend murmured sometime around midnight, after hours sitting on one of the benches on the SOLDIER floor, drawn and silent. “It was his idea.” He’d had his sword propped against his shoulder the whole time, one hand folded up to grip the hilt so that his arm wrapped around the blade like a child with a favorite comfort object, and now he swung it up with an easy twist of the wrist to set the base against his forehead, eyes clenched just a little too tight to seem serene. “But _I_ _encouraged him._ ”

“Angeal…” Sephiroth mumbled.

“It’s not your fault,” Angeal told him without opening his eyes. “It’s not your fault, Sephiroth.” He lowered the sword. “You haven’t done anything. It’s not your fault.”

“It’s not your fault,” Sephiroth echoed back. He didn’t think Angeal believed it any more than he had.

The feeling was more like losing too many men in an engagement than like anything else he had ever felt, but it wasn’t very much like that. This wasn’t chagrin and regret, this _ached_. The two childhood friends had reached out their hands and included him, made him their _brother,_ and in the same moment, unknowingly, he had killed Genesis. Hot rage gathered under his tongue and ran down his throat like acid, and there were no enemies left to kill.

-

“I’m so very sorry,” Sephiroth told Genesis the first time he was allowed to see him. The echo of that first day, when he hadn’t even understood that the other SOLDIERs might be trying to be friendly, let alone potential friends, woke the phantom stab wound between his ribs. It was in the other side of his chest from where Angeal’s shrapnel had landed, and despite the fact that that wound had been real and this was not, he felt more injured now than he had then.

Genesis’ gesture of dismissal was much more fluid and flourishing than his own had been. “Nonsense, my brother in arms. It wasn’t _your_ fault.” In case the stress laid on _your_ had not been clear enough, Genesis suggested with his eyebrows that he knew precisely whose fault it was. And he didn’t mean himself, not that Genesis was ever the type to blame himself for anything.

Well, it was first and foremost the Science Department’s for not informing SOLDIER of the possibility of their giving one another bizarre genetic conditions until it was too late. Sephiroth hadn’t _actually_ poisoned Genesis’ blood under combat conditions, but it was easily possible he could have. It was actually somewhat surprising Genesis was the first to fall ill, considering how frequently SOLDIERs bled on each other…

Sephiroth met Genesis’ eyes, and he understood. Looked over at Angeal, to check that he had figured it out as well, but he knew Genesis better and had spent more time eavesdropping on Hollander; of course he had.

“Once I get out of here,” Genesis said easily, “what do you think of all three of us going for lunch somewhere that isn’t the cafeteria? I didn’t think anything but army rations could be worse than that slop, and yet here I have learned differently.”

“I grew up on this food,” Sephiroth said mildly. “I assure you the nutritional balance is calculated to a nicety.”

“Well, if it will help him grow up to be like you,” Angeal said with heavy irony that didn’t seem aimed at anyone in particular.

Genesis knew something about his condition that the Science Department didn’t want him to share.

He was going to tell them anyway.

-

Project G. It was somehow no real surprise to learn that Hollander had been running some grand variation on the SOLDIER experiment with Genesis and Angeal—he’d always taken charge of them, especially Angeal. Sephiroth had never thought much about it, but given the information it felt profoundly natural. Of course. Of _course_ they weren’t just taking to enhancement unusually well, of course they weren’t _just_ talented. Of course the Science Department had been up to something.

“Our contracts allow for it,” Genesis added as a side note, stabbing his pasta viciously in the padded booth they’d taken in the mid-grade Corel-style restaurant they’d selected near the edge of the Sector Four plate. The randomized selection was hopefully making life harder for any Turks interested in monitoring them. “The language is phrased to sound like it’s just meant to avoid needing new release forms every time they refine the SOLDIER process, but actually we’ve given permission to do absolutely anything to our bodies in the name of science.”

Sephiroth was quite sure he had never signed any forms. The Science Department had taught him how to write in the first place. Perhaps his mother had signed them before she died. He consumed his own noodle dish without comment.

“But why didn’t it affect me the same way?” Angeal asked quietly. He alone wasn’t eating—it was strange, Sephiroth thought, how Genesis acted and reacted his way through life, building dramas out of minor incidents, and now was treating his own impending death with exactly the same flair. The emotional pitch had probably changed, Sephiroth thought it had, but he was not a good judge of such things, and knew it. The point was, his _behavior_ was almost unaltered. While Angeal, who weathered most trials with the same dogged fluctuation between grimness and good humor, was _changed_ by this, changed visibly. He was _affected_.

“Chance?” Genesis shook his head. “Ask Hollander. Maybe it will give him a new idea.”

-

The war was different when they got back to it—Sephiroth thought at first it was a change in his own attitude, but realized before long that there was a new deference in the way his comrades reacted to him, a new terror from his enemies. A new, almost obsequious air from his commanding officer that occasionally flared with resentment. He hoped they got a new general soon. This one was a waste of skin, and it was not made up for by the fact that he was one of the earliest surviving SOLDIERs.

Between having abandoned his own defensive strategy for emotional reasons and the fact that Genesis’ condition was his fault, Sephiroth could take very little pride in his achievements regarding Shou-Gurren, so he ignored the new respect as much as possible. It grated, especially from soldiers older than himself—which was still most of them.

He and Angeal fought back to back now whenever they could, and Sephiroth could not decide whether he was imagining that they were oddly well synchronized, as if he simply _knew_ where his blood brother was without having to look. A whisper in the bottom of his mind that mirrored the way Genesis’ pain in the instant of taking a mortal wound had been somehow contagious.

Perhaps they had imagined that, too, and this was just the result of familiarity and keen reflexes. He didn’t say anything about it to Angeal.

They were gaining territory again, step by bloody, grueling step. He wondered what it would take to get the Wutai to surrender. He wondered if he could do whatever it was.

Of course, even if the war ended, that didn’t mean his friends would be safe.

They put Genesis back on missions two weeks after his injury. Monster-hunting on the Eastern continent, mostly. At least he hadn’t been sent back to Wutai yet, but it was only a matter of time. “Hollander says if I stay on the casualty lists much longer the department will pull his time and funding for the problem,” the red-haired colonel told Angeal over the phone when they called him from base camp, with Sephiroth listening in beside him. “I’m only a Second, after all, there are hundreds of me; my _potential_ doesn’t count for anything if I’m going to die. But if I stay useful…”

Angeal put his fist through the wall. The other soldiers using the communications room startled and looked around, but when they saw him extricating his fist carefully from the splinters of cheap plyboard clearly realized he’d gotten bad news and returned to their own business. “This company,” Angeal said quietly. It wasn’t a hiss, or a growl—even his facial expression was only a few degrees more thunderous than ‘grim’—but the feelings came through clearly anyway.

“…yes, quite,” said Genesis from the other end of the line. “I swear, some days for five gil I’d pitch every department but SOLDIER into the sea.”

Sephiroth lifted the telephone handset neatly from Angeal’s grasp and put it to his own ear. “Come, the troopers give good service.”

“True,” Genesis agreed. “Very well, all active military may stay clear of the drink.”

“Unlikely,” replied Sephiroth, and Genesis burst out laughing.

He stopped pretty quickly, his left lung still weak, but his mood didn’t turn down too sharply at the reminder. “Did you hear that, Angeal?” he called, loud enough that Angeal probably could hear it, although his grim expression had barely lightened. “He made a joke! We have to go out drinking in celebration next time you two are in Midgar!”

The fact that he could probably do that if he chose was still a new idea, but Sephiroth gave an agreeable hum. “If your condition allows for that sort of thing,” he said.

“Oh, it should,” Genesis said airily. “My wound reopens occasionally, but so long as I keep a Heal and a Restore on me and use them proactively I’m perfectly functional.”

A flesh wound that would not heal would be one thing. This had run through his _lung._

“Don’t push yourself,” Sephiroth directed.

Genesis snorted. “I’m assigned to Midgar, SOLDIER Commander Sephiroth, I’m not under your command.” A pause in which he probably rolled his eyes. “I don’t plan to take risks,” he allowed. “Put Angeal back on?”

-

They didn’t get drinks next time Sephiroth and Angeal had leave. Genesis was back in medical when they got to Midgar.

The stack of books beside his bed when they visited stood testament to how accustomed he was getting to being confined. Sephiroth supposed it was better for this to happen to Genesis than Angeal from that perspective; he was worse at stillness but had much more tolerance for lack of physical activity.

“I’ve been catching up on culture,” Genesis explained when he saw Sephiroth looking. He was dressed in a magenta buttoned shirt and had his hair styled, but was reclining in his hospital bed propped on pillows, bedclothes pulled over his lap, and hadn’t tried to sit up straight when they came in. “Amazing how much more reading you can get done as an invalid than on active duty.”

“These aren’t even all about _Loveless,_ ” Angeal observed, a book in each hand as he studied their spines.

“I do read other things,” Genesis sniffed.

Angeal shuffled through the stack for a few seconds and came up with three different editions of the work itself. Raised his eyebrows.

“Shut up.” Genesis turned away from his oldest friend—as best he could without moving his torso too much—and gave all his attention to Sephiroth instead. “You remember the premise of _Loveless,_ right?”

As if anyone could avoid memorizing the particulars if they spent any time at all around Rhapsodos. “Three friends,” said Sephiroth, and he’d suspected for some time that part of the reason Genesis had been so amenable to Angeal’s desire to befriend him was it had meant that his life would be a little more like his literary idol. “One died, one flew away…the one that was left became a hero.” He shrugged. “A common story.”

“Not really.” Genesis shifted a little against his pillows, as if hoping a change in angle would ease pain he wasn’t admitting to but was failing to hide. “At least, not until it spawned imitators. _Loveless_ takes its depth partly from its age—people refer to the novel as the original and the play as derivative, but the play leans as much on the older epic poem, for elements of form as well as story. Friends parting and being reunited, often tragically, is a common theme from the era, but…”

He had to pause to catch his breath. (Sephiroth’s own chest ached faintly, but that was just emotion. Probably.) “But those are usually pairs to begin with. Larger groups of friends generally come together over the course of a narrative, to act as support for the hero.

 _"Loveless_ is unusual in that the hero _loses_ his comrades and then leaves the story altogether, as the narrative concerns itself with the despair and rage of the wanderer and the inner conflict of the prisoner, and the business of war and the world fades into the background. Many scholars theorize that the poem was written as a supplement to a more conventional existing work, now lost.”

That was actually vaguely interesting. “So even the original is a derivative work,” Sephiroth said thoughtfully.

Genesis’ smile was pained. “Everything is.”

Sephiroth frowned a little. This was one of the times it sounded as though there was some other message behind the overt one, but he couldn’t decipher it.

“How bad is it, really?” Angeal asked abruptly, grim and blank, and—Angeal didn’t _do_ that; he could be forbidding but Sephiroth had never considered him any better than Genesis at not broadcasting his feelings to the vicinity. Well. Perhaps a bit better than Genesis.

This time the smile was thin as a Wutaian blade. “Hollander says if he hasn’t had a breakthrough in six weeks, my course of treatment will be switched to palliative care. The plus side is that Shinra will cover all the drugs I need for four months. If I take longer than that to die, the paperwork to requisition painkillers gets challenging.”

This unfeeling corporate fact lay on the rumpled blanket like the gutted husk of an insectoid monster, obdurately existing despite everyone’s distinct preferences otherwise.

Angeal and Sephiroth shared a look across the bed. It was uncomfortable enough that Genesis would probably use the word ‘anguished.’ _Say something,_ Sephiroth thought. He had never wished more to be telepathic, although he could be fairly sure the slight, unsurprised widening of Angeal’s eyes meant something like _no, you_ even without any confirmed psychic powers.

“They had a man in here talking about my pension the other day,” Genesis drawled. He was only just seventeen; his pension ought to be a concern as remote to him as the stars. “They’ll pay it out to my designated next of kin for twenty years. It’s a pittance, since I’ve only been in the service a few years, but the circumstances count as dying in action so there’s a bonus for that. I don’t want my parents to get it, Goddess knows they have all the money they need, so I’ve amended my paperwork to designate the two of you the beneficiaries, as adopted siblings. If I don’t make it—”

“You can’t just—” Angeal broke in.

“It’s not _charity,_ Angeal, I’m spiting my father—”

“I don’t _care_ about whether it’s _charity_ ,” Angeal snapped. “Stop talking like you’re sure you’re going to die.”

“I’m not sure,” Genesis said after a moment. “But since I don’t have any means, just now, of planning to survive, I’m making plans for the event of my death.” He frowned. “You _could_ be grateful, Angeal, if you can’t manage supportive.”

“Grateful.” The flatness didn’t belong in Angeal’s voice. His fist clenched. “You have a plan,” he said firmly. It wasn’t so much an accusation—it was a demand, this is how the world _must_ be, I cannot accept it otherwise. “To survive. Let me know when you’re ready to share it.”

With that, he left the room, Buster-style sword wide across his stiff back. He was nearly seventeen, now, and had almost grown into his shoulders.

“He’s going to regret that exit if I take a turn for the worst overnight and perish tragically,” Genesis remarked into the silence left behind.

Sephiroth turned to stare at him. “You _are_ resigned,” he said, and this was accusatory.

Genesis looked aside. “Not really.” The corner of his mouth curled, eyes on the door. “One walked away,” he murmured.

That blank silver feeling that had come over Sephiroth on the battlefield when Genesis took his wound teased at the edges of his consciousness, but there was no enemy here to devastate. “I don’t want your pension.”

Genesis flicked his fingers. “Well, give it all to Angeal then—I daresay he needs it more, he’s paid less than you and forever sending his pay home to his mother in her dirt-floored shack. He’d have been even more impossible if I’d tried to give it just to him, though.” He narrowed his eyes sharply. “Not that it will matter, if I survive. Which I fully intend to do, damn you. But what can I be expected to do about it from here?”

Sephiroth looked down at the stacks of books. “You could be studying the relevant science, instead of the history of literature.”

“And in a few months of study from my bed crack the problem that several doctorates who _created_ it are stymied by?”

Sephiroth shrugged. A slim chance, but surely better than none.

“I can’t even get access to the data!” Genesis expostulated. “My biology is _above my clearance level._ ”

That, he admitted, was an obstacle, but as it was a practical one it was also something that could be addressed and surmounted. Spiting Hojo sounded at the moment like an excellent side benefit to any efforts to that end, rather than a drawback. Even if it hadn’t been, this was his doing; he could risk more than Hojo for his brother. “I can try to get it for you. How have you been getting your books?”

Genesis looked annoyed for a further moment before lapsing back into exaggerated weary tolerance. “They assigned me a permanent aide during my first convalescence; I’m now on indefinite leave and they’ve stopped sending me paperwork—thank the Goddess, I would throw it in their faces and laugh if they tried it now—but no one’s reassigned the boy.”

“SOLDIER?” Sephiroth asked.

“Cadet. Redhead from Mideel, enthusiastic about sharing a continent of origin. Anyway he’s tolerably adept at fetching things from libraries.”

Sephiroth nodded. “Introduce us.” Someone who was expected to be carrying Genesis books and papers would be less likely to draw suspicion. He wondered how you went about vetting a soldier for trustworthiness in interdepartmental subterfuge.

“That’s your strategist voice,” Genesis observed. “You’re plotting on my behalf. My hero.” The irony dripped.

“Someone has to.” Angeal would help. Genesis would too, presumably. He wasn’t actually self-destructive, Sephiroth didn’t think. Only bitter.

Genesis chuckled, fingers straying over the embossed cover of one of his volumes. “You know, in the old stories…things like ‘The Golden Chocobo’ and ‘Goddess Catches the Moon,’ where there are three brothers that go out to seek their fortunes…the eldest always fails first, and worst, and the youngest is always the hero.” He covered his eyes with one hand. “Perhaps I should have taken it as a warning.”

“I’m no hero,” said Sephiroth, because his idea of a hero might be vague but it certainly didn’t describe a fifteen-year-old who felt most comfortable doing paperwork alone in a cubicle and got everyone around him killed, whatever the trashy puff articles published after the bridging of Shou-Gurren might suggest. “But we’re _not going to let you die._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Genesis' literary digression is my attempt to make sense of the vast amount of contradictory information about _Loveless_. Literally no fact we are given is at all compatible with more than three other facts, and you generally have to push it to get that many. Kunsel does, however, mention an 'original' versus adaptations at one point, so I kicked off from there and gave it a real cultural footprint.
> 
> ^^ In a similar vein, ‘Goddess Catches the Moon’ is a folk tale derived from a Cetra story originally learned from the Planet itself, about how Gaia got the (smallish) moon we see during the rocket launch sequence. Because why _shouldn't_ Gaia share some of our fairy-tale tropes? ^^
> 
> Okay, that's a wrap! Eventually I will get the urge to meddle with this friendship out of my system. Until then, thanks for joining me. ;]


End file.
